Guido van Rossum on Programming at Python Speed

Bill Venners writes "In this interview, Python creator Guido van Rossum states: 'I'm not particularly worried by the fact that people say you can prototype more easily in Python, but eventually the Java version makes it easier to build a robust large system. You can prototype in Python. Once you've explored the space more, you can do the planning and design that the Java version requires. If you start writing in Java knowing as little as you did when you started writing the Python version, you'll waste way more time exploring than actually building the system you'll eventually build.'"

Comments

Re: Evolution of Java

[bunratty]

Funny, I thought the Java Community Process and the Bug Parade were step 2! As a result of feedback, Java has added nested classes, strictfp, generics, enums, foreach, reference objects, tons of library classes, as well as fixed thousands of bugs.

Re:So?

[scrytch]

As GvR correctly says, there's simply more text to type in Java, to a large part because of the overhead of Java's static typing (aka "keeping the compiler happy"), but also because Python is slightly more high-level than Java.

Once I discovered Ocaml, I found out that you can have both strong typing at compile time, without having to actually use types (but I can if I want to). I can have polymorphism without inheritance trees (again I can if I want to), and I can have interfaces without interface keywords (and I have pattern matching if I want it). Actually I found this in Haskell, but I just can't wrap my brain around monads ... different story.

Type inference really is the best of both worlds. I just can't go back to the 1960's compiler technology of explicit typing anymore. Sometimes I have to, but I complain all the way.